Gullivers Travels by Part 3 Chapter 6 Page 14

two others more effectual, which the learned among them call acrostics and anagrams. First, they can decipher all initial letters into political meanings. Thus N. shall signify a plot; B. a regiment of horse; L. a fleet at sea; or, secondly, by transposing the letters of the alphabet in any suspected paper, they can lay open the deepest designs of a discontented party. So, for example, if I should say, in a letter to a friend, ‘Our brother Tom has just got the piles,’ a skilful decipherer would discover, that the same letters which compose that sentence, may be analysed into the following words, ‘Resist, a plot is brought home; The tour.’ And this is the anagrammatic method.”

The professor made me great acknowledgments for communicating these observations, and promised to make honourable mention of me in his treatise.